Etiological and clinical features of childhood psychotic symptoms: results from a birth cohort.

Context: It has been reported that childhood psychotic symptoms are common in the general population and may signal neurodevelopmental processes that lead to schizophrenia. However, it is not clear whether these symptoms are associated with the same extensive risk factors established for adult schizophrenia.

Objective: To examine the construct validity of children's self-reported psychotic symptoms by testing whether these symptoms share the risk factors and clinical features of adult schizophrenia.

Report from the working group conference on multisite trial design for cognitive remediation in schizophrenia.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)-Measurement and Treatment Research to Improve Cognition in Schizophrenia (MATRICS) Project and related efforts have stimulated the initiation of several studies of pharmacologic treatments for cognitive impairment in schizophrenia. Cognitive remediation may provide an excellent platform for the provision of new learning opportunities and the acquisition of new skills for patients who are engaged in pharmacologic trials to improve cognition. However, it is not clear how a cognitive remediation intervention would be employed in multisite clinical trials.

Circumstances under which practice does not make perfect: a review of the practice effect literature in schizophrenia and its relevance to clinical treatment studies.

In this article, we review the literature on practice effects in schizophrenia, an underappreciated confound in interpreting cognitive improvement in clinical trials. We first examine claims regarding first- and second-generation antipsychotic medications as cognitive enhancers, and follow it with a discussion of recent studies demonstrating how practice or placebo effects may drive 'positive' findings. Thus, this review suggests that many previous findings can be reinterpreted in this light.

Static and dynamic cognitive deficits in childhood preceding adult schizophrenia: a 30-year study.

Objective: Premorbid cognitive deficits in schizophrenia are well documented and have been interpreted as supporting a neurodevelopmental etiological model. The authors investigated the following three unresolved questions about premorbid cognitive deficits: What is their developmental course? Do all premorbid cognitive deficits follow the same course? Are premorbid cognitive deficits specific to schizophrenia or shared by other psychiatric disorders?

Method: Participants were members of a representative cohort of 1,037 males and females born between 1972 and 1973 in Dunedin, New Zealand. Cohort members underwent follow-up evaluations at specific intervals from age 3 to 32 years, with a 96% retention rate.

Active ground optical remote sensing for improved monitoring of seedling stress in nurseries.

Active ground optical remote sensing (AGORS) devices mounted on overhead irrigation booms could help to improve seedling quality by autonomously monitoring seedling stress. In contrast to traditionally used passive optical sensors, AGORS devices operate independently of ambient light conditions and do not require spectral reference readings. Besides measuring red (590-670 nm) and near-infrared (>760 nm) reflectance AGORS devices have recently become available that also measure red-edge (730 nm) reflectance.

A brief cognitive assessment tool for schizophrenia: construction of a tool for clinicians.

Cognitive impairment in schizophrenia is often severe, enduring, and contributes significantly to chronic disability. But clinicians have difficulty in assessing cognition due to a lack of brief instruments. We evaluated whether a brief battery of cognitive tests derived from larger batteries could generate a summary score representing global cognitive function.

The effects of antipsychotic medications on emotion perception in patients with chronic schizophrenia in the CATIE trial.

Few pharmacological intervention studies have examined the impact of medication on social cognition, particularly emotion perception. The goal of this randomized, double-blind study is to compare the effects of several second generation antipsychotics and a first generation antipsychotic, perphenazine, on emotion perception in individuals with schizophrenia. Patients were assigned to receive treatment with olanzapine, queitapine fumarate, risperidone, ziprasidone or perphenazine for up to 18 months.

Relationships among neurocognition, symptoms and functioning in patients with schizophrenia: a path-analytic approach for associations at baseline and following 24 weeks of antipsychotic drug therapy.

Background: Neurocognitive impairment and psychiatric symptoms have been associated with deficits in psychosocial and occupational functioning in patients with schizophrenia. This post-hoc analysis evaluates the relationships among cognition, psychopathology, and psychosocial functioning in patients with schizophrenia at baseline and following sustained treatment with antipsychotic drugs.

Methods: Data were obtained from a clinical trial assessing the cognitive effects of selected antipsychotic drugs in patients with schizophrenia.

Memory-prediction errors and their consequences in schizophrenia.

Cognitive deficits play a central role in the onset of schizophrenia. Cognitive impairment precedes the onset of psychosis in at least a subgroup of patients, and accounts for considerable dysfunction. Yet cognitive deficits as currently measured are not significantly related to hallucinations and delusions.

Measuring memory-prediction errors and their consequences in youth at risk for schizophrenia.

The largely consistent columnar circuitry observed throughout the cortex may serve to continuously predict bottom-up activation based on invariant memories. This "memory-prediction" function is essential to efficient and accurate perception. Many of the defined cognitive deficits associated with schizophrenia suggest a breakdown of memory-prediction function.

Psychosocial factors in the neurobiology of schizophrenia: a selective review.

Aim: Various forms of social adversity have been implicated in the development and emergence of psychosis. However, how and when these events exert their influences are not clear. In this paper, we attempt to examine these putative psychosocial factors and place them in a temporal context and propose a neurobiological mechanism linking these factors.

Cognitive effects of antipsychotic drugs in first-episode schizophrenia and schizophreniform disorder: a randomized, open-label clinical trial (EUFEST).

Objective: Cognitive impairment, manifested as mild to moderate deviations from psychometric norms, is present in many but not all schizophrenia patients. The purpose of the present study was to compare the effect of haloperidol with that of second-generation antipsychotic drugs on the cognitive performance of patients with schizophreniform disorder or first-episode schizophrenia.

Methods: Subjects were 498 patients with schizophreniform disorder or first-episode schizophrenia who were randomly assigned to open-label haloperidol (1 to 4 mg/day [N=103]), amisulpride (200 to 800 mg/day [N=104]), olanzapine (5 to 20 mg/day [N=105]), quetiapine (200 to 750 mg/day [N=104]), or ziprasidone (40 to 160 mg/day [N=82]).

Proof-of-concept trial with the neurosteroid pregnenolone targeting cognitive and negative symptoms in schizophrenia.

The neurosteroid pregnenolone and its sulfated derivative enhance learning and memory in rodents. Pregnenolone sulfate also positively modulates NMDA receptors and could thus ameliorate hypothesized NMDA receptor hypofunction in schizophrenia. Furthermore, clozapine increases pregnenolone in rodent hippocampus, possibly contributing to its superior efficacy.

White matter abnormalities and neurocognitive deficits associated with the passivity phenomenon in schizophrenia: a diffusion tensor imaging study.

The passivity phenomenon is a distressing Schneiderian first rank symptom in patients with schizophrenia. Based on extant data of functional and structural cerebral changes underlying passivity, we sought to examine cerebral white matter integrity in our subjects. We hypothesised that the passivity phenomenon would be associated with white matter changes in specific cortical (frontal, parietal cortices, and cingulate gyrus) and subcortical regions (thalamus and basal ganglia) and correlated with relevant neurocognitive deficits, compared with characteristics in those without the passivity phenomenon.

Potent induction of B- and T-cell immunity against human carcinoembryonic antigen-expressing tumors in human carcinoembryonic antigen transgenic mice mediated by direct lentivector injection.

The applicability of immunotherapy would be dramatically broadened to a greater number of recipients if direct "off-the-shelf" products could be engineered to engender functionally potent immune responses against true "self"-tumor antigens. This would obviate the need for ex vivo culture of dendritic cells or T cells on a patient-by-patient basis, for example. The carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is a glycoprotein expressed in normal gut epithelium that is up-regulated in the majority of colon cancers, non-small cell lung cancers, and half of all breast cancers.

Schizophrenia is a disorder of higher order hierarchical processing.

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder in which the patient manifests with auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, and disorganized speech and thinking. It is associated with significant social dysfunction. There are many hypotheses regarding schizophrenia.

Examining health-related factors among an ethnically diverse group of Asian-American mental health clients.

As currently developed, health policies and practices consider Asian Americans as one homogenous group, ignoring the unique differences of each group regarding its own healthcare needs. In fact, the healthcare needs of mental health clients have received little attention in the professional literature. The purpose of this article is to investigate the diverse healthcare needs of Asian Americans seeking mental health services.

A genome-wide investigation of SNPs and CNVs in schizophrenia.

We report a genome-wide assessment of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and copy number variants (CNVs) in schizophrenia. We investigated SNPs using 871 patients and 863 controls, following up the top hits in four independent cohorts comprising 1,460 patients and 12,995 controls, all of European origin. We found no genome-wide significant associations, nor could we provide support for any previously reported candidate gene or genome-wide associations.

Pharmacogenetics of antipsychotic response in the CATIE trial: a candidate gene analysis.

The Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE) Phase 1 Schizophrenia trial compared the effectiveness of one typical and four atypical antipsychotic medications. Although trials such as CATIE present important opportunities for pharmacogenetics research, the very richness of the clinical data presents challenges for statistical interpretation, and in particular the risk that data mining will lead to false-positive discoveries. For this reason, it is both misleading and unhelpful to perpetuate the current practice of reporting association results for these trials one gene at a time, ignoring the fact that multiple gene-by-phenotype tests are being carried out on the same data set.

Results of phase 3 of the CATIE schizophrenia trial.

Objective: The Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE) study examined the comparative effectiveness of antipsychotic treatments for individuals with chronic schizophrenia. Patients who had discontinued antipsychotic treatment in phases 1 and 2 were eligible for phase 3, in which they selected one of nine antipsychotic regimens with the help of their study doctor. We describe the characteristics of the patients who selected each treatment option and their outcomes.

Development and psychometric performance of the schizophrenia objective functioning instrument: an interviewer administered measure of function.

Existing measures for functional assessment do not adequately address the relationship between cognitive impairment and function. The Schizophrenia Outcomes Functioning Interview (SOFI) was developed to measure community functioning related to cognitive impairment and psychopathology. Following review of existing measures and discussion with experts, caregivers, and patients, content was generated for four domains: 1) living situation; 2) IADLs; 3) productive activities; and 4) social functioning.

Extrapyramidal side-effects of antipsychotics in a randomised trial.

Background: There are claims that second-generation antipsychotics produce fewer extrapyramidal side-effects (EPS) compared with first-generation drugs.

Aims: To compare the incidence of treatment-emergent EPS between second-generation antipsychotics and perphenazine in people with schizophrenia.

Method: Incidence analyses integrated data from standardised rating scales and documented use of concomitant medication or treatment discontinuation for EPS events.